Dallas’ own Ken Upton (pictured above), a senior staff attorney for Lambda Legal, has been getting a lot of ink lately for his role in a Louisiana case involving a same-sex couple that sought to have both of their names listed on an adopted child’s birth certificate. Upton scored a victory in December, when a judge ruled without trial that both fathers’ names should be listed. However, the Louisiana attorney general is challenging the ruling and seeking a full trial in the case, The Shreveport Times reports today.
The couple, who live in New York, say the fact that they had no birth certificate for the boy made it difficult for them to get him health insurance, and resulted in them being detained in an airport because a security guard thought they’d kidnapped him (the couple is white, and the boy is black). But the attorney general is now arguing that the couple’s problems are of its own making: If they’d just accepted a birth certificate with only one of their names, things would have been fine.
Needless to say, Upton is outraged:
“That is just offensive. I can’t believe the state actually made that argument,” Upton said. He compared it to defending restrictions overturned decades ago on blacks by saying, “You don’t have a transportation problem — you just sit in the back of the bus.”
YEAH Ken! 🙂